WORKSHOPS
Monument to a future that never was
This workshop aims to explore the disenfranchised grief brought on by the slow violence of capitalism: ecological catastrophe, resource and political instability, and . Relying on the “House of Modernity” framework from the Gesturing Toward Decolonial Futures Collective, participants use embodied cognition and thinking-through-clay to express the promises that were made to them by modernity that can no longer be fulfilled as we awaken to the harms of the system. Participants then squish their embodied clay thoughts into a plaster press-mold of an urn - as the urn fills with grief and broken dreams, it is pressed together and comes out as a physical monument to grief. We understand that we are not alone, and we can let go of comforts and securities of modernity and face the future as adaptable, resilient beings. The urn itself dries, decomposes, and is reclaimed back into useable clay for further projects - just as we can compost the energy of rage and sadness into a galvanizing force to transform and build a new, more habitable society.
London Craft Week, DesignBar, 9th May 2025
Ancestral Utopias, RCA Hangar Space, 29th April - 1st May 2025
Clay Play for Bodies
Participants explore body image and self-perception through embodied cognition. By engaging with locally harvested London clay while narrating their experience, insights and deeper understandings of self-image are revealed. Based on Clay Work and Body Image in Art Therapy (2021) by Dr. Trisha Crocker & Susan M.D. Carr.
London LGBTQ Centre, 27th March 2025
Matcha Clay Day
Tea bowls are imperfect vessels that sit snugly in your hands as you sip green tea. They are often highly prized as art objects, and have a storied history, but are simple and satisfying to make! Join us at Dalston clay to experience the therapeutic and grounding properties of playing with clay and learn to whisk matcha just like the tea masters of medieval Japan!
We will begin the session with a meditation. This practice will ground us in our bodies and provide an avenue to open our senses to the way of tea. We will follow the meditation with a matcha ceremony performed by Evguenia, who will lead us through mindful contemplation of the tea, and gently help us understand the important attributes of the teabowl. Evguenia will then guide us through the process of hand-building a teabowl using pinching and carving techniques. We will hand-form our matcha bowls, then learn to carve and smooth the bowls. We can add colour and decoration to the bowls using slip.
Once your bowls are finished, we will glaze and fire them, and the bowl will be ready to pick up at the end of the next month. They will be dishwasher and microwave safe, and can be used for much more than just tea! (think rice bowl, jewellery dish, salt pig...)
Dalston Clay, 24th November 2024
Dalston Clay, 28th January, 2025